Here’s the poem of the week from our creative writing class, held on Wednesdays at 5pm for anyone in our community.
Of late, right now, in the pocket of Big Now, my heart is beckoning me to look out at the clouds, to savor like citrus the option to pay attention. For a recent while in adult life, it has been novel not to be wandered around like an animal by my lust. My wallet in my pocket, my heart in my chest, I’m not here to champion anything, save for the lattice pattern of afternoon light through a screen door on a napping dog’s mangy foot. I’m half asleep at the wheel of a beetle in a field. I’m pulling cotton candy from your fair hair, floss by floss. I’m learning to maintain breathing rate under duress of eye contact, shame on my head like a lampshade where a party has left its traces. To press my hands together, and then let them go. To be a ghost with gas in a roomful of guests in nice hats. To decline to rewrite the biography of a slumlord. Of late, at last, right now, I am twisted into a stagger and placed between blue birds and few words. A heaven. A heaven. I’m glowing faithfully, my heart and a dark will for me set out like Christmas cookies, stood up to add the sound of measure and hear the echo of my own heart’s hell stumble through nature to sunrise.
By Kelley Sivits